Moving On - Children of the Children of God

"One of the most chilling statements I have ever witnessed – and I have focused specifically upon the arena of organizational child abuse, including within the Catholic Church – was that of the mother who would not answer a reporter's question whether girls were married off to much older men, but rather asserted that whatever happened there happened out of "love.""

As I recently saw a former child member of FLDS state, no girl in america should be deprived of the right to an education or, as she becomes a woman, the choice of who (or when, even whether, I might add) to "marry".

I watched on TV as a news magazine show portrayed the breaking up of families, which I and I believe many others endured at the hands of leaders in The Family/COG cult, as a cruel and horrible thing. I don't recall anyone ever portraying our suffering as poignantly in the media. It might have helped that they had a young interviewer, for once. It probably also helped that they did not have the Mme. Tussaud-ish (ghoulish seems harsh) Keith Morrison reporting.

I thought I should post this article I read.

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The Rescue of Children from the FLDS Compound in Texas: Why the Arguments Claiming Due Process Violations and Religious Freedom Infringement Have No Merit
By MARCI HAMILTON
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Thursday, May. 01, 2008

Recently, Texas authorities entered the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch, which is one of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) compounds, with a warrant based on calls from a person who alleged that she was an underage girl being subjected to physical and sexual abuse, including rape, at the Ranch. Once the authorities entered, though, they discovered pregnant underage girls, girls with more than one child, papers indicating that rampant polygamy was occurring at YFZ, and even a document involving cyanide poisoning. The authorities then intelligently made the decision that they had to remove all of the children from a situation that posed obvious and serious danger to them.

Lawyers for the FLDS members – who reside not only at YFZ but also at compounds located in Arizona, Utah, South Dakota, and Bountiful, British Columbia, Canada -- have been arguing in the press that the entry and removal of the children constituted a "massive" violation of due process. Others have argued that the authorities' actions represent the unfair targeting of one religion.

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Each of these arguments is singularly misguided.

The Due Process Argument: Whether or Not the Caller Was Legitimate, the Important Point is the Lack of Any Government Misconduct and the Serious Evidence of Crimes to Children

There are now allegations that the calls to the authorities spurring the raid were placed by a woman who was not within the YFZ compound. Even if proven, however, this claim would not affect the validity of the authorities' actions. Absent clear evidence that the state fabricated the call or misled the judge who granted the initial search warrant, neither of which seems remotely plausible, the entry cannot be faulted on constitutional grounds. Once the authorities were inside, the evidence of criminal behavior was so plainly apparent that further investigation was more than warranted.

No self-respecting child protective agency could have departed from that compound without taking all of the children away as well. The authorities revealed this week that 31 out of the 53 underage YFZ girls have been pregnant and/or are pregnant now. Imminent risk of harm, the legal standard that bound the authorities, was apparent, and indeed, a decision to leave the children in that setting would have opened up the state to liability. The key point here is that children were being abused, and were very likely to be abused in the future, and, worse, this was occurring in an atmosphere where the adults seemed incapable of apprehending the depth of the criminal behavior they were committing.

It is just as though the state had entered a drug den on the basis of reports about one child's abuse, and discovered a bevy of children in a position likely to lead to neglect and mistreatment. In such a hypothetical, surely no one would contest the appropriateness of removing children from that setting. The religious cloak here does not forestall the proper operation of the child protective authorities.

Despite the large number of children who were taken, what happened in Eldorado is really no different than any other situation where the state investigates alleged abuse, substantiates a risk of harm, and takes action to protect all those children who might be subject to such harm. Arguments that children should not be separated from their mothers simply have no purchase in a circumstance where it is apparent that the mothers are incapable or unwilling to protect their children from sexual or other abuse.

Before criticizing the Texas authorities who have witnessed the operation of the FLDS firsthand, one must stop to think with a clear head about what was going on in this compound. This is a conspiracy of adults to commit systematic child sex abuse, where the men and the women force their girls to be "married" to much older men in order to have their many children, and where they groom their boys to be the next generation of abusers, and then abandon some of their own boys in order to keep the numbers favorable for the abusing men.

A Sect In Deep Denial of Its Crimes Cannot Be Trusted with Its Children

What is most striking here is that not a single adult from the ranch or the sect has been willing to admit to the obvious cycle of severe child sexual abuse. One of the most chilling statements I have ever witnessed – and I have focused specifically upon the arena of organizational child abuse, including within the Catholic Church – was that of the mother who would not answer a reporter's question whether girls were married off to much older men, but rather asserted that whatever happened there happened out of "love."

There is widespread knowledge about the practices of the FLDS, which has been practicing polygamy and child sex abuse for over a century. This organization traces its roots back to the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, who mandated polygamy in the mid-Nineteenth Century. (Importantly, the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints, or Mormon Church, publicly renounced the practice at the end of the Nineteenth Century and again at the start of the Twentieth. Thus, it would be a grave error to confuse FLDS with LDS or Mormonism.)

The recent Utah trial of the FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs documented the practice of elders arranging and encouraging the sexual abuse of underage girls. (Jeffs, as readers may recall, was ultimately apprehended for his brazen Mann Act violations, consisting of transporting girls across state and international boundaries to be delivered to FLDS men, after the FBI finally placed him on its Ten Most Wanted List.) So did the earlier trial of Tom Green in Utah. Moreover, numerous well-documented publications have detailed terrifying and illegal behaviors including Carolyn Jessops' Escape , her account of escaping the sect; Andrea Emmitt Moore's account of ten fundamentalist polygamist sects, God's Brothel ; and Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven – among others. I wrote about the FLDS in my book God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law , and have been writing columns on the FLDS such as this one for years.

And if the already disseminated knowledge about the FLDS is not enough, we have reports this week alleging an FLDS baby graveyard with 200 graves between the Arizona and Utah compounds. Advocates are telling us that these graves are the result of brutal abuse of young children to obtain their obedience, and likely medical neglect and the genetic deformities that result from generations of inbreeding.

Yet, many have argued there was a violation of due process as though the authorities are required to be intentionally ignorant about the communities within their jurisdiction. FLDS lawyers have been floating to the press and public the bizarre notion that authorities were required to enter the compound with a mental blank slate, as though they knew absolutely nothing about the FLDS. It is a position that defies common sense. While authorities need probable cause for a particular raid, they do not have to act stupid once they are inside a criminal organization, whether it is a religious group, the mob, or a drug cartel. Indeed, it is law enforcement's obligation to be informed about likely criminal conduct in their jurisdiction. That includes orchestrated child abuse.

Why Texas Authorities Deserve Credit for Good Judgment—and the ACLU for Bad

You have to give the Texas authorities credit for putting the interests of the children first. In contrast, Utah and the FBI have focused on one man at a time, an approach that appears to have done next to nothing to stop the entrenched cycle of abuse within the system. In contrast, the authorities in Arizona, Utah, and South Dakota, where other FLDS compounds are situated, have made it very clear that they would never follow the Texas authorities' lead of taking all of the children away from obvious danger.

Indeed, the Utah Attorney General was actually peeved that Texas would make such a bold move, because it had the capacity to undermine his increasingly friendly relations with the FLDS in Utah, while the Arizona Attorney General sent out a general press release essentially telling the citizens of Arizona not to expect any dramatic rescue of children obviously at high risk of abuse, because Arizona law just does not permit it. The latter has yet to explain precisely why he believes children at imminent risk of harm cannot be brought to safety in that state (and if he believes that is the law, surely he should call for a change in it!). In South Dakota, the authorities say they are awaiting some triggering event that will permit them to check on the girls and women.

It really is remarkable – American law enforcement routinely infiltrates criminal organizations where the issues are drugs and money, but when the issue is widespread child abuse, they "have to" sit on their hands until somehow, some way one of those on the inside of a cult invites them inside. If any court finds that the rescue of the FLDS children -- in light of the evidence gathered on the basis of a good faith warrant during the raid and the evidence now piling up -- is a due process violation, then it will be a giant step backward for the civil rights of children everywhere. Let's hope we won't see that erroneous ruling ever made.

Predictably, the ACLU has chosen to take the side in opposition to the children, publicly wringing its hands over the process as it applies to the adults. It is one of the most underexamined phenomena in the American civil rights movement that the organization that has considered itself such a champion of individual rights has had such a consistently insensitive attitude toward the bodily suffering of children. We are in the midst of a civil rights movement for children, yet the ACLU is woefully lagging behind.

Free Exercise: An Even Weaker Argument than Due Process, For Belief Is No Defense to Crime

The even weaker argument circulating, once again encouraged by the FLDS lawyers, is that the rescue somehow violated the FLDS's right to the freedom of religion. There are two underlying theories, neither of which has much traction – for good reason, because both should be quickly dismissed as totally unconvincing.

First, the FLDS argue that they have been "targeted" in violation of the First Amendment. The argument takes a First Amendment concept and grossly misapplies it. While it is true that the government cannot choose a particular religion to be treated differently from other religious (or similarly-situated secular) organizations, the government is not prohibited from stopping criminal conduct even if the only ones engaging in the behavior are religious or if the conduct is restricted to the property of a religious organization. In short, a government may not discriminate against a group, but the Constitution does not force authorities to willfully close their eyes to criminal conduct.

This raid was about child abuse, and as I explain above, it is not really any different than authorities entering a drug den or a private home where there are credible accounts of abuse. The child protective services universe is sufficiently stable by now that whoever is sexually abusing a child can be made to stop. It is the best interest of the child that determines government action. That is obviously what is happening in this case, and the attempts to misleadingly shift the focus to the religious identity of the perpetrators is not justified by either law or basic decency. There is simply no religious defense to criminal behavior. That this behavior was so heinous makes using the cover of religion for it all the more appalling.

Second, the FLDS argue that the government simply cannot interfere with a religious enclave and that they should have autonomy from the government's interference. This latter theory has been touted by more mainstream religious organizations in recent years, especially those battling clergy abuse, but courts have not had much patience with the notion that autonomy includes within it a right to be free to abuse children. I would hope that the mainstream religious organizations that have been pushing "church autonomy" are having second thoughts as they watch this particular group embrace their vision to justify systemic and systematic child sexual abuse.

Finally, there are those who would argue that the age of sex and marriage is merely "cultural," and, therefore, the government has no business interfering with this sort of religious group. That is one of those arguments that is hopelessly behind the times, as it treats children as property rather than persons. It was not long ago that they were, in essence, nothing but property. The Texas authorities give one hope that they are moving surely and steadily into the category of persons -- persons who have civil rights that protect their bodily integrity against adults who would use their position of power to take what these children cannot freely give.

Why a Texas Appellate Court Seriously Erred In Concluding that Texas Child Protective Services Should Not Have Rescued All of the Children at the FLDS Compound
By MARCI HAMILTON
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Thursday, May 29, 2008

Last week, the Third Court of Appeals in Austin, Texas, issued a very significant – and very seriously mistaken – ruling, In re Sara Steed et al.

The case involved 38 women from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), who challenged the state’s removal of all the children from their FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas when authorities entered on the basis of reports that a 16-year-old girl was being physically and sexually abused.

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They presented their dubious challenge as a petition for a writ of mandamus – an extraordinary remedy that is only rarely granted. Yet the court ruled in favor of the women, and against the Texas child protection authorities.

That decision was not just wrong, but wrongheaded – for it applied the opposite approach to questions involving child abuse and religious entities than it should have: the court focused on religious belief while downplaying the actual conduct at issue. Fortunately, the state is now appealing to the Texas Supreme Court, and rightly so.

I wrote about the constitutional issues involving the removal of the children by Texas’ Child Protective Series (CPS) in a prior column. The appellate decision, though, did not address constitutional issues. Rather, it only addressed the Texas law governing the removal of children from their parents. In this column, I will address that separate set of legal questions, and explain why this decision was indefensible.

Why the Decision Was Not Only Wrong, But Premature

To begin, the decision was poorly timed, for two reasons. First, as the state argues in its pending appeal, the judges should have waited for the soon-to-be released DNA results, which are necessary to learn which children belong to which adults – and thus may also reveal provide evidence regarding which children are the victims of or the result of statutory rape. Given the intense intermarriage practices within the organization, the results will also clarify any questions regarding incest.

Such testing was necessary because FLDS members and the medical personnel who attend at their births routinely fail to file birth certificates and, during these proceedings, children and adults alike have been less than forthright about their identities or family relationships. For the court to pretend that it knew with certainty which children belonged to the women who filed the writ is irresponsible, given the facts. Moreover, reaching a decision about which children belong to which parents before DNA results are released only rewards this pattern of deception of legal authorities.

Second, the lower courts had already begun individual hearings to reunite some parents with their children, under CPS family service agreements – thus mooting the appeal with reference to these children. Those lower court judges, with the benefit of individualized evidence, were in a far better position to assess the potential harm to each individual child and to craft terms of reunion in a way so as to protect the children.

In fact, at the time the appellate judges were issuing their decision, those hearings were leading to the release of 12 children to their parents – but those releases, importantly, were based on a careful assessment of the facts for each child. Importantly, too, the children were not permitted to be returned to the compound, and the parents had to agree to ongoing oversight by the state (as would any other parent in similar circumstances).

The Relevant Texas Law Requires Evidence of Danger to the Children, and There Was Copious Evidence of That

There are three criteria under Texas law that govern whether CPS may remove children from their homes. Here is the most relevant language from each criterion, and the language on which the Texas appeals court focused: There must be (1) “a danger to the physical health or safety of the child”; (2) “reasonable efforts, consistent with the circumstances . . . were made to eliminate or prevent the child’s removal”; and (3) reasonable efforts have been made to enable the child to return home, but there is a substantial risk of a continuing danger. . . .”

Let’s begin with the first and third factors, invoking danger to the children. Surely, evidence of ongoing felonies must weigh very heavily here – and there was convincing evidence two had been committed repeatedly in the compound: child rape and polygamy.

Texas law makes polygamy a felony -- with its degree determined by the age of the new, additional spouse. The felony is third-degree if the spouse is an adult, second- degree if she is over 16, and first-degree if she is under 16. (In this respect, then, the anti-polygamy laws significantly reinforce the laws against child sex abuse and make a strong statement about the state’s view of underage marriages.)

Felonies are serious business under Texas law. As a general matter, a first-degree felony is subject to imprisonment "for life or for any term of not more than 99 years or less than 5 years"; a second-degree felony entails imprisonment "for any term of not more than 20 years or less than 2 years,” and a third-degree felony requires imprisonment "for any term of not more than 10 years or less than 2 years." These are the kinds of sanctions one would have thought a court would have taken seriously, but the appellate court actually ignored the law of polygamy as though those felonies were simply beside the point.

Was there enough evidence to state that felonies had been, and were being, committed in the FLDS compound? Absolutely. The lower court had so found, and the appellate court was legally required to accept those findings unless it saw an “abuse of discretion” on the lower court’s part. Here, the lower-court findings, far from constituting an abuse of discretion were well-substantiated.

Based on the sect’s own written records, there were numerous polygamous marriages in the compound, and plenty of marriages between underage girls and much older men. Moreover, even the appeals court acknowledged evidence that “[t]wenty females living at the ranch had become pregnant between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.” Girls at the compound had told investigators that “there was no age too young for girls to be married.” Evidence indicated that the members of the sect delegate to a single individual – the reigning prophet -- the task of choosing who will marry whom, which leads to the inescapable conclusion that the community’s marriage and sexual practices constitute a seamless web as opposed to a collection of independent nuclear families. (While a few one-wife families exist, only younger men are likely to have a single wife, as they wait for the blessing of at least three to get a preferred spot in heaven.)

How the Appellate Judges Trivialized Rampant Sexual Abuse and Numerous Felonies

How could the appeals court ignore such compelling facts and conclude there was no real danger to all of the children? No one will ever know the actual motives of these three Republican judges, but the opinion strongly suggests unthinking deference to claims of religious and parental “rights,” even though those claims do little more than cloak criminal behavior that puts children at risk.

First, the judges treated past felonies as if time had erased them – even though these crimes went unprosecuted and unpunished. For instance, they gratuitously asserted that of the 20 underage mothers (and, thus, statutory rape victims) identified, 15 are now adults. Yet that does not negate that these women were victims of crime, that when the sex occurred they could not legally consent, and that the other 5 continue to be victimized.

This is just another version of the message so many victims of child sex abuse hear: they should just move on with their lives and leave the rest of us alone, an antiquated attitude wholly inappropriate for modern-day judges.

Second, the judges tried to magically convert statutory rape into marital intercourse, citing the rule that if a minor is legally married, she (or he) can have “consensual sexual intercourse.” The problem is that for the underage marriage to be legal, the marriage has to be sanctioned by either parental consent or court order. Where was the proof that either existed here? And even if it did, what of the many polygamous marriages, which no parent or court could sanction, and in which underage girls played a part?

More fundamentally, we must ask what, exactly, led the appellate court to try to justify this many child rapes in such a small community? Or the pervasive grooming of boys to be child rapists? Just how many children have to be sexually abused or groomed to rape in order to pass the appropriate threshold of “danger” according to these judges? I would have thought adult males having sex with 20 underage girls (repeatedly, given that some of them have more than one child) out of this small, close-knit community passed all standards of decency and easily justified bringing all of the children out of the enclave. If not 20, how many?

The Fallacy Behind the Court’s Opinion: Absolute Freedom of Religious Belief Is Guaranteed, But Is Never An Excuse for Crime

The appellate judges chastised the court below for taking into account the beliefs of the FLDS, but the existence of religious belief does not erase the illegality of conduct.

There is an absolute right to believe whatever you want under the First Amendment. No court or other government entity may punish a group for its shared beliefs, whether they be religious or secular.

For example, if a group believed in polygamy and child brides and bemoaned the laws against those practices, but still abided by the law, no legal sanction could be applied. They could proclaim their beliefs in every legislature and from every rooftop, and no one could make them stop. This is one of the great cornerstones of the American experiment with religious liberty.

When such a group crosses the line from vocal objection to legal violation, though, that absolute right disappears. In its place is the rule of law. While religious beliefs are protected from religious discrimination, they are no excuse or defense to the application of laws like those governing marriage, crime, and child abuse.

For this reason, the appellate court should have been focused on the conduct alleged, regardless of the belief that motivated it, and regardless whether belief was mentioned below. Had it focused on that conduct, as was its duty, then the court would surely have been led to the opposite conclusion, and would have upheld the earlier decision approving the removal of all children from this troubling compound.

For those who may still question the belief/action distinction (as I did at one point in my career), I think it is worthwhile to consider the following two hypotheticals, which strongly prove the value of that very distinction (and why CPS acted appropriately when it removed all of the children):

Hypothetical Number One. A group of 100 adults and 400 children live together, in a remote location with little contact beyond their own community. None of them are religious. Rather, they have a secular belief that men live longer if they have sex with multiple women, and especially if they have sex with girls as soon as they start menstruating. A man’s future health is confirmed most clearly by the birth of a child, which means women are forced to produce as many children as possible from adolescence through old age. Within the community’s practices, boys are groomed to be men with multiple spouses and child brides. A single “medical” leader determines which female partners will most improve each man’s health. In short, they practice top-down polygamy and engage in persistent statutory rape. The authorities get a report that a 16-year-old girl is being abused. When they enter and see the underage pregnant girls and the girls with children of their own, which children should they leave behind?

Hypothetical Number Two. A group of adults engages in child prostitution and lives in an isolated enclave. They do not practice polygamy; in fact, the adults do not get married at all. Each adult might sleep with another adult at some point, but never for any period of time that would be recognized by the state as even a common law marriage. They do have as many children as possible, though, to keep the business going. The kingpin determines where the girls are sent after they reach adolescence – most are transported within the United States or up to Canada, and made available for whatever men are interested. Some are kept on the premises for more child-bearing. Girls generate the most income, so boys are either abandoned or they stay within the group, spreading their sperm to as many girls and women as possible, to produce the most children possible. Here, we have rampant child abuse, though no polygamy. Local authorities get a tip that a girl is being abused. When they arrive and find records establishing the above facts, they have to decide which children to take and which to leave behind. Which child would you leave behind? How would you sleep at night if you left one behind?

The Texas courts should be looking at the conduct of the FLDS, just as authorities would in the above scenarios. No matter what they believe, their actions require state intervention for every child involved.
Under Texas law (and basic common sense), every child is in danger in both the real sect and in the two hypotheticals, and state officials should be given the latitude necessary to secure their safety. The facts establish that the FLDS is a fundamentally lawless group, which has no respect for marriage laws, rape laws, child abuse laws, or even the legal requirements governing birth certificates. (Others who have escaped from the organization detail welfare fraud and child labor law violations as well.) As currently constituted, they offer no environment for children, period.

Marci Hamilton is Visiting Professor of Public Affairs and the Crane Senior Research Fellow at the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. An archive of her columns on church/state issues - as well as other topics -- can be found on this site. Professor Hamilton's most recent book is Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children(Cambridge 2008). Her previous book is God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press 2005), now available in paperback.
Why a Texas Appellate Court Seriously Erred In Concluding that Texas Child Protective Services Should Not Have Rescued All of the Children at the FLDS Compound
By MARCI HAMILTON
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Thursday, May 29, 2008

Last week, the Third Court of Appeals in Austin, Texas, issued a very significant – and very seriously mistaken – ruling, In re Sara Steed et al.

Why the Decision Was Not Only Wrong, But Premature

The Relevant Texas Law Requires Evidence of Danger to the Children, and There Was Copious Evidence of That

How the Appellate Judges Trivialized Rampant Sexual Abuse and Numerous Felonies

The Fallacy Behind the Court’s Opinion: Absolute Freedom of Religious Belief Is Guaranteed, But Is Never An Excuse for Crime

The appellate judges chastised the court below for taking into account the beliefs of the FLDS, but the existence of religious belief does not erase the illegality of conduct.

There is an absolute right to believe whatever you want under the First Amendment. No court or other government entity may punish a group for its shared beliefs, whether they be religious or secular.